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The present invention generally relates to designing electronic circuits, and more particularly to designing electronic circuits that are easily adaptable to different binary data formats.
Big endian and little endian are two different formats for storage or transmission of binary data. In big endian, the most significant bit(s) and/or byte is on the left, and the reverse is true for little endian. Designers generally create designs that are specific to either the big endian or little endian format, depending on application requirements.
Designs are typically tailored for either big or little endian, which does not support adaptability of designs from one endian design to another. If a design is created for one of the formats, for example, big endian, the designer may thereafter recognize a need for the design to be implemented to little endian requirements. However, to change a design that is tailored to big endian to a little endian design would require a great deal of effort since the design would have to be analyzed and restated to be consistent with little endian requirements. The reverse is also true for changing a design from little endian to big endian.
method that address the aforementioned problems, as well as other related problems, is therefore desirable.
In various embodiments, the invention provides a method for implementing electronic circuit designs that are adaptable to different binary data formats. Separate packages-are provided for the different binary data formats. The names of the constants and subtypes are identical as between the packages, and the values associated with the constants and subtypes in each of the packages are particular to the associated data format. A selected one of the packages is imported into the design, and selected references in the design to binary data are made using the names of the constants and subtypes set forth in the packages. The circuit design is then implemented by synthesizing and mapping the design to the selected device.
It will be appreciated that various other embodiments are set forth in the Detailed Description and Claims which follow.